19. Software is THE Service: It’s 109 times more expensive for a 10-person company to run Exchange Server rather than Gmail, according to Merrill Lynch. That stat alone explains why small businesses are shifting their IT resources into the cloud, said Blackie.

17. Three Million: Kaseya has sold more than 3 million software licenses so far to roughly 3,000 customers, according to Blackie.

16. Listening to Feedback: CEO Blackie concedes that it’s “still a little too difficult to do business with Kaseya.” The company is exploring customer-facing portals and other IT systems to close that gap.

15. Taking It All In: During Kaseya keynotes, Autotask CEO Bob Godgart was seated front-and-center – and taking notes faster than me.
14. Virtualization: The V-word is everywhere here. Blackie sees virtualization as a huge opportunity for both Kaseya and its partners going forward.

13. New Campus: MSP University this week expects to launch a redesigned, vastly improved Web site, according to co-founder Erick Simpson. The organization assists MSPs and vendors with MSP strategies, training and education.

12. When Bad Is Good: Kaseya CEO Gerald Blackie told me the US economy has not impacted business so far. On the contrary, he says Kaseya expects to double in size this year.
11. Linux Agent: Kaseya reinforced plans to offer management agents for Linux, HP-UX, AIX and other Unix and Linux offerings.

It seems like 1000 licenses is the entry point for using Kaseya. This seems to be in contrast to where the other RMM tools are going with much smaller license packages available. I know I would not want to be stuck with 1000 licenses that I am not making any revenue on.

Lane: You point out a real challenge/threat in the MSP market. “Shelfware.” In the 1990s, we saw lots of big enterprises paying for far too many ERP licenses and other types of software licenses, only to have those licenses sit on a shelf.

Hopefully, MSPs will do considerable homework before they sign on the dotted line for licenses they may not use anytime soon.

Lane – your comment ” I know I would not want to be stuck with 1000 licenses that I am not making any revenue on.” is right on the mark! This is why the hosted licensing model and “pay per use” is gaining popularity.

Generally speaking, I see great value in the “hosted” or “Master MSP” model promoted by Lane’s company (Do IT Smarter) and others. But it’s also important to note that Lane has bet his business on this model, so it’s natural for him to favorite it.

That said, I think Lane, Do IT Smarter and other Master MSP-type programs (Ingram Seismic) are the fastest, lowest-risk ways for VARs to test the MSP waters without buying a bunch of licenses they don’t need.

Once the VAR has a better feel for hosted and on-demand services from Master MSPs, he or she can continue down the Master MSP road and/or evaluate building out their own NOCs.

The beauty of the Master MSP model is you don’t get locked in (assuming you’re dealing with a reputable company); you’re allowed to change your mind and move to your own data center if truly needed.

The entry point qty is pretty low for Kaseya, but the price per is attractive once you get into the higher qty’s. We have 2500, I would think though that 1000 would be on the high side of average, given the average revenues of the typical msp. Of course, this could be an example of shelfware gone crazy, of which we have some, no doubt. including the shelfware, we still have good per managed device pricing on the tools.
Highlight 19, 109 times? That is out of sync with our own analysis, which tell me that using 10 users for example, makes internal exchange 16 times more costly versus hosted Google for 1 year. Over 3 or 4 that multiple drops to 8 and change. Now, getting into the size clients we sell to, once you hit 80ish users, over 4 years it is a wash for the client. I included our standard pricing for server support too in the mix. I’m a fan of outsourcing, and we even proposed this exact scenario to a current client last week. They decided to upgrade their Exchange system instead, even though it would cost more given the user count (~50). For thier business, either is a good solution. If it was my business, I would have selected the hosted google. Their comfort level was higher having their own system. I guess that says good things about our services. A year from now as businesses get more comfortable about hosting their services like email externally, the decision probably would go the other way I suspect.

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